April blizzards bring spring lizards

T.S. Eliot wrote in 1922 that “April is the cruelist month.” If he had been writing from Colorado’s Wet Mountains rather than Great Britain he may have employed harsher language.

We’ve had it all today: rain, groppel, thunder, lightning, sunshine, driving blizzard-like conditions, big flakes. And now it looks like a real cold night is in store. The uninitiated may be inclined to ask how much snow we got, expecting an answer in inches. The answer is something around 15, but such numbers are irrelevant.

Here’s what’s important. Over at Bear Bones Ranch I refill a 100-gallon stock tank for seven horses daily; usually it’s about half-empty. The oval tank is roughly 3 feet by 5 feet. Horses on average each drink 6 to 8 gallons of water daily. Today the tank was only down about two inches from the top. I’ll leave the math to you because frankly I’m not any good at it, but that’s a lot of water. And, no, the tank is not situated where it can catch any runoff from a roof.

This storm brought to memory two essays. One called “The Struggle” was penned one winter when money was short. And “The Arrival of Harrison Jake” tells of a late-April storm that came shortly after the birth of my son, whose 5th birthday is Monday. Both might be entertaining for readers who find themselves inside this snowy April weekend.